Thirty years ago Monday, months of when-will-it-open speculation ended with the grand opening spectacle of the Starck Club. Now there is a new documentary about the era-defining Dallas nightspot. It drew a packed house closing night of the recent Dallas International Film Festival. A TV series could be next.

“It is the 30th anniversary of opening night,” says co-director Michael Cain, “and it is sweetly appropriate that we sign our final deal with Marc Levin (producer/director of Chicagoland) who is helping us release The Starck Club and develop a series based on the same.”

So what was it like that night 30 years ago? Fleetwood Mac had just gone on hiatus and lead singer Stevie Nicks was launching her solo career. She flew into Dallas and checked into The Mansion on Turtle Creek.

At 11:30 p.m., she and her band took the stage at Starck. Instead of doing a perfunctory set, Nicks danced and swirled for an hour and a half. She opened with “Gold Dust Woman” and worked her way through “Dreams,” “Sarah,” “Stand Back,” “Leather and Lace,” “Gypsy,” “The Edge of Seventeen” and “Rhiannon.”

Listening in that packed crowd was Bruce Springsteen guitarist and future Sopranos star Steve Van Zandt, Knotts Landing femme fatale Donna Mills and members of the local gentry such as Robbie Vaughn, Shannon Wynne, Monk White and Taylor Boyd.

A curious mix of blue bloods and transvestites gravitated to the unisex restrooms where club designer Philippe Starck sat in his blue jeans, telling friends, “Stay in here, it’s the best place.”

It was past 2 a.m., after the bars had stopped serving, that closing act Grace Jones took the stage in all her androgynous glory sporting a semi-Mohawk.

And five years later, it was all over. Jones was back at Starck for the club’s last night, a Farewell with Grace party.

You may heave heard The Starck Club will make its world premiere this Saturday at the Dallas International Film Festival. Michael Cain and Miles Hargrove have been working on the documentary for five years now. Even they admit that’s a lonnng time. (You can hear me and KERA’s Stephen Becker in conversation with Cain and Hargrove right here).

Well, they’ll keep working on it after the premiere. On Thursday the filmmakers announced that TV and movie producer Marc Levin (Chicagoland) has come aboard as an executive producer. Levin will help with further revisions, with an eye toward making a narrative feature for the big screen or a TV project.

“It started out as a narrative feature, and it would be nice to bring it back to that,” Cain says. “A TV series, whether it is documentary and/or narrative has long been the goal. Given Marc’s success in that arena, it is a natural fit.”

The film chronicles the rise and fall of Dallas’ famous ’80s nightspot, known for splashy live music by the likes of Grace Jones and Stevie Nicks, an anything-goes dance floor fueled by dynamic DJs, and an abundance of the drug ecstasy, which was legal when the club opened. Larry Hagman and Owen Wilson are among the film’s many interview subjects. The premiere is 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Texas Theatre.

“The music, fashion, politics, personalities, and drugs are all part of a mesmerizing mix,” said Levin in a statement. “The instant sellout of the world premiere is indicative of the legendary lore that surrounded the club, and I am excited to take this film to a wider audience that will be swept up in its soundtrack, celebrity and dance music’s crucial yet innocent symbiosis with a then-legal drug ecstasy.”

The much-lamented Starck Club will rise again for one night when the long-awaited Starck Club documentary is shown at the Dallas International Film Festival. Unfortunately for those who’ve been waiting to see the Michael Cain-produced film about the legendary Dallas nightclub, the April 12 screening at the Texas Theatre is completely sold out.

Aterward, there will be a blowout party at the original Starck space in the Brewery, only now the club is called Zouk.

Back in the ’80s, Dallasite Blake Woodall created the club with a group of partners and hired Philippe Starck to design the space.

Blake will definitely be at the screening. And he plans to go to after-party—for a little while at least. “The party is for those who can still stay up that late,” he says with a chuckle. As he has commented before, his club days are history. “I used to go out at 9 p.m. and come home at 5 or 6 a.m.,” he says. “Now, I go to bed at 9 p.m. and get up at 5 or 6 a.m.”

Dallas filmmaker Michael Cain’s current work on separate documentaries about the Starck Club and retailer Stanley Marcus unearthed a historical nugget: Neiman Marcus played a significant role in establishing Starck as the quintessential club of the ’80s.

Before his death last year from ALS, former Starck doorman Bob Amaro sat for an interview for Cain’s Starck Project film and explained that in the early days, the club was cool, but not always full.

“The club wanted to be exclusive, to find a very chic, beautiful crowd,” Amaro explained. “But these same people might not come to see you every night of the week for months at a time. We were struggling to find that footing.”

Initially, the club’s only advertising appeared in Andy Warhol’s house organ, Interview magazine.

But against all advice, the club ran a month-long radio promotion offering no cover charge for people arriving between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Simultaneously, founder Blake Woodall cut a deal with Neiman Marcus offering free club admission to all guests attending a celebrity-filled party for emerging designers at the downtown Neiman’s.

That night, worlds collided. Half of the club was filled with radio listeners who’d come for a free look without paying the steep cover charge while the other half had chicly attired fashion purists who had come over from Neiman’s.

“Suddenly it all worked,” says Cain. “People who had never seen a club like this were in a room full of fashion people and famous celebrities. Then, the word of mouth spread. From that week on, it became the Starck Club people know and still talk about to this day.”

In filmmaker Michael Cain’s much-anticipated new documentary about the Starck Club, the late Larry Hagman tells one of the great stories of how he unintentionally interfered with a planned drug bust at the Dallas nightlife temple.

Back in the Reagan ’80s, Starck was the epicenter of cool. It was also known as a place where designer drugs were plentiful.

Hagman came to see what all the fuss was about. He was so impressed with the scene that he returned the next night with his cast mates: Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray and even his TV mom, Barbara Bel Geddes. They stayed until the wee hours before rallying to be on the set of Dallas the next day.

One of the off-duty cops working the Dallas shoot told him, “You cost the city of Dallas a lot of money last night.” According to the policeman, 28 officers were outside, about to raid the club, but called it off when the most famous TV cast in America came strolling in.

Cain’s plans to be finished editing the film by early next month went awry two weeks ago when his wife, Melina, went into labor a little early and delivered their new baby daughter, Athena Perry Cain. Both mother and daughter are healthy and happy. And now, Cain is back in the editing room finishing up the film.

Running at just under 100 minutes, the Starck documentary features a rare interview with Paris-based designer Philippe Starck, who had a sometimes-rocky relationship with the club that carried his name. Among the others interviewed are Oscar-nominees Owen Wilson and Thomas Haden Church. (Church was a concierge at the nearby Adolphus Hotel during the heyday of the Starck Club.)